Looking Out.
Looking In.
Always Edgy.

February 2009

27 February 2009

Coffee addicts more than power. And the absolute best coffee corrupts so absolutely that it has been the reason I went to bed ecstatic at night so I could get up the next morning to a mind-blowing cup. The older I get the crazier I get and the more the premium fuel I load into my car so I can rush toward the highest octane cup for my body.

I travel to savor the ultimate cup.

How must I drink coffee?

I must drink it in my father’s cozy home in Chennai in a white stoneware mug that I bought for my mother over 30 years ago when I got my first job.She is now stuff of legend. And so too her coffee. I savor every old bubble and froth that is just so, exactly the way she made it since the day I found coffee. But with every sip, I will miss–and dismiss–her.

“Why must you drink it so hot?”

“You must be an ostrich?”

“Just like your dad.”

“He wants it just so. Won’t change his ways.”

“You will burn your throat lining.”

Dad's coffee doesn't foam up quite right. With every vanishing sip of the cup, my mother is a disappearing aroma. A Has-bean?

Then I must drink my coffee as an espresso, standing at a coffee bar at the Segafredo Zanetti in Italy. Here I will go to heaven (and back, alas) as boorish Baristas slide me an order of almond croissant–and a bill.

Oh, I must let my tongue loose over “degree coffee” in South India’s Kumbakonam. Here I must sip a filter coffee and dip into fluffy idlis served with coconut chutney.

And in Paris’ Rue Saint Dominique, I must drink “un Capuccino, madame, s’il-vous-plait, avec un croissant” while watching Scottie dogs walk owners who swish and perk like them, give or take a few degrees of snoot.

Finally, near home in California, I must seek my cup of nirvana at Cupertino’s Roasted Coffee Bean, punched up with a toasted and buttered sesame bagel.

And when I go this weekend to the new Café del Doge in Palo Alto, I wonder, will I discover the ghost of Cafe Verona?

24 February 2009

In
the opening chase scene ofDanny
Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire,
two tubby policemen are running after two boys through slush and slum. The
camera, on occasion, is positioned at the muzzle of a stray dog. From the point
of view of an unwanted dog, the world feels alien and fetid, yet familiar and
fragrant. It becomes a metaphor for a movie that, from start to finish and both
on and off screen, has erupted into a riot of color, contrast and controversy. Top
Indian cine producers now whimper and whine over Slumdog’s glory.

Indians
in India and in the diaspora have reacted to Slumdog’s riproaring success with
a sweet and sour taste in the mouth. “How come we didn’t think of that, yaar? This is our story, man, but they got in the queue before us? Agaaaain?” Now imagine Russell Peters’ bulging
eyeballs. He might say: “They
already took our
diamonds. Now they want our bloodyOscartoo?”

Indians
are competitive. They’re hardworking. The last thing they imagined was being
upstaged by someone else in Mumbai, on what was their mega movie turf–and that
too by the Brits who ran away, over a century ago, with India’s Koh-i-Noor
diamond.

For
a layperson such as I, who claims merely to be a consumer of a good story
tastefully told, only a handful of Indian moviemakers have ever made movies
worth watching. With the exception of Satyajit Ray from Kolkata, K. Balachander
from Chennai and a few others, Indians moviemakers don’t believe in making a
barebones movie to simply tell a story; until now, their raison d’etre has been to mega-sell every story. A
simple narrative requires deep honesty. And honesty often requires
soul-searching and, to a degree, a dose of detachment.

For
Bollywood’s famed directors, digging around for an honest story may have
involved grappling with and coming to terms with their own hypocrisy. At the
traffic light in many of India’s cities, slum girls weave between vehicles
doing cartwheels. As soon as the light turns green, the girls worm their way
out fiercely from the charging traffic, a sight that makes one’s stomach churn.
Will these children retreat in time? They do so, without fail, every time.
Visiting Indians like me heave a sigh of relief and then sit back in our cocoon
of air-conditioned comfort. In a fraction of a second, the incident is
forgotten. The inequity and the iniquity of the situation recede as the traffic
light turns green.

It’s
obvious, then, why the novelty of the creative ways of the poor never struck a
chord in the local moviemaker, especially one who was raised and dyed in the
culture. While Slumdog’s British director perceived (on his very first trip to
India) the heart and the pluck of these forgotten children, Bollywood had
already relegated them to a compartmentalized world where orphaned rag dolls,
open latrines, hookers and transsexuals occupy Platform 9-3/4, a station in
life that no one enters but the lowliest of Muggles. That is how the members of
a striated, self-absorbed society in post-colonial India deal with corruption,
inequity and human suffering. As Pavan K Verma describes so eloquently in Be
Indian, Indians “are
a pragmatic people, naturally amoral in their outlook.”

So
the self-anointed upper class won’t talk about the seaminess of the slums of
poor India. That is like talking about cancer or other stigmatized illnesses in
the family, an anathema to people from eastern cultures. It’s there. Why talk
about it? What of it? It’s the same hypocrisy that shows the Indian storyteller
dropping broad hints about sex even though sex, judging from the population, is
a predominant pastime in Indian life. Indian Cinema alludes to the joy of sex
in its songs and in its wildly suggestive drenched choli (equivalent of a wet T-shirt) dance
sequences in the rain. The meaning of the lyrics of a Tamil song of the last
decade goes something like this. “Sweetheart, an ant has entered my bodice and
is presently wreaking havoc on my body. Why won’t you?” See the subtlety?

In
a system where precision is taboo and suggestion is a virtue, honesty
constantly ends up getting the boot. But don’t think Indians are incapable of
candor. Director Satyajit Ray’s landmark film, Pather Panchali (“Song of the Little Road”, 1955) told
the truth about the struggles of ordinary people. It featured mostly amateur
actors, and was made by an inexperienced crew and it won the "Best Human
Document" award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1956, establishing Ray’s place in
the international silver screen firmament. Ray never catered to the notion of
mass appeal; instead, he wove masterful stories about the human condition in
India before and after the British Raj.

Ray
was celebrated for the truth in his stories. Vikas Swarup, the author of Q
& A, the book on
which Slumdog is based, addresses the sameissue of truth and integrity regarding the quiz in his work.
“The toughest part is to ensure the questions are integral to the story. The
readers should not feel that because of the questions I have contrived the
story. Readers should feel that because of his life story he has been able to
answer the questions,” he says to the Rediff columnist in a 2005 interview.

How
hard is it for India’s moviemakers to offer the integrity that Swarup strugged
with, albeit in another medium? Instead, they would rather deliver a mishmash
of many elements for mass consumption with box office gains as the measure of
self-worth. As a result of misplaced priorities, the best of Indian cinema has
languished.

Kannathil
Muthamittal (“A Peck
on the Cheek”, 2002), a deftly woven tale–by acclaimed South Indian director
Mani Ratnam–about a child born in strife-torn Sri Lanka to parents of Sri
Lankan and Indian origin swept away key awards at international festivals: Best
Feature Award at the Jerusalem Film Festival, Audience Award for Best Feature
Film at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, Audience Award, Jury Award and
Special Award at the Film Fest New Haven, and Best International Film at the
Westchester Film Festival, among others. But the film never reached the Oscar
stage. Instead Devdas
was put up for the Oscars in the same year (2003,) a blockbuster by Indian
standards that ultimately went bust under Oscar scrutiny. The committee in
Mumbai didn’t learn its lesson after Lagaan fizzled at the Oscars in 2002. When
will it learn that a moving story of universal significance will win over
sizzle, ostentation and masala (blend
of many elements).

Former
Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Shashi Tharoor, often refers to
the Indian ideal of pluralism as a thali in his talks and writings. In India, all ethnic,
cultural and religious identities exist under the umbrella of an Indian
identity much like the thali
at an Indian restaurant–a large stainless steel plate with a number of
distinctive dishes served in different bowls.A majority of Indian movies have dished up the thali concept with ingredients that don’t
mix rather than a one-course fare. And thus, great art never emerged from this
bed of masala.

An
Indian director filming Slumdog would have cut to maudlin song and sentiment in
the rain scene when the three slum kids have to find a home inside a broken
pipe for the night. The first embrace of Jamaal and Latika would have morphed
into a dream sequence in the Himalayas. That would have offered us a peek at
Latika’s Navel and, oh, her Runway Leg. How brilliant that Boyle should boil
down the quintessential element of Indian cinema into an enchanting dance
number at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus as the credits roll.

For
now people of Indian origin around the globe are rejoicing in the attention
India has got through Slumdog. As Pavan Verma maintains, “Nothing unites
Indians more than success, just as nothing brings out their natural
fractiousness more than failure.” Indians are ecstatic that genius music
composer and director, A. R. Rahman, is finally getting his due. But as is
typical in India, some in Rahman’s hometown of Chennai are already nitpicking
over his unimpressive work of the last decade saying that Rahman’s early scores
were much more deserving of international attention.

I
know what tugged at my heartstrings in Slumdog: the bird’s eye view of Bombay’s
shanty towns, the lens hovering over the head ofa boy squatting over an open latrine, the view of the dusty
countryside through the shaft of sunlight between two dirty train compartments,
the upside down shot of Jamal inside the restroom. These were strange, raw
moments–no rocket science cinematography in the view of experts, no doubt–but
visceral in the experience of many moviegoers.

‘Slumdog
Millionaire’ may not have deserved an Oscar nomination. Yet, its searing
honesty and its subsequent victories may be the best thing that happened to
Indian cinema. It is also a measure of how, in art, honesty has to be the main
color on one’s palette knife even if the brush strokes are crude and inelegant.
As the Indians moviemakers are learning, it’s time to zoom in on the snout of a
stray slum dog because only he can smell the truth close to the ground.

23 February 2009

The morning after the Oscars it’s always unsettling to look
at oneself in the mirror. This year was hardly different or easier. An insult by Oscar Wilde
worms its way up the counter on to the right edge of the mirror. “Twenty
years of romance make a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years of marriage
make her something like a public building.”

What do you know? My upper arms resemble Corinthian pillars.
The flesh on either side of my neck billows, surrenders to pressure from my bra
straps and then rises wildly again in mild annoyance to set like Jell-o where
my arms begin.My neck was once
delicate, like Ms. Jolie’s.My
breasts, like Hansel and Gretel, have lost their way. There’s not even a witch
around to point them in the right direction.Life, for these twins, is looking grim. Were Sarah Jessica
Parker’s propped up with aluminum scaffolding? My once 17-inch waist–after
which Scarlett O’Hara’s was modeled–now swells like a brick wall in India after
the worst monsoon. It cascades over the waistband of my jeans. Where does my
waist end and where do my hips begin? Architects need look no further than my body to engineer two parallel lines. Ah, but I have yet to travel further south to
the hip region, which, in the last two decades, has been weathered by stretch
marks and remodeled by two children.

Like a public building in ruin, I am a very big shadow of my former self. Do I provide shade? Or
else, why would my husband and my children come running back to me?

19 February 2009

Well spoken in French. Needs help with vocabulary. Use of Past Tense makes her tense.

Sneakers. Sweatshirt. Sweatpants.

Skin color light copper. A peu pres.

Evidemment, a maid to some rich lady at the 7eme arrondissement.

"Alors, c'est pour vous? Ou pour votre dame?"

("Now, is it for you? Or for your lady?")

I was at the Wednesday Rue de Grenelle marche in Paris by the Motte-Piquet and Dupleix Metro right under the overhead metro bridge.

This was one of those flash-bang-scram moments of my life.

A tragicomic moment.

A strip in a Superheroine comic where I was prone on the floor, my ego oozing out of my being like egg-yolk, the white and yellow parts crying "Neener, neener, neener, Where's the place for a Browner?"

"Non, non, madame, c'est pour moi." It's for me, I retorted, glaring at the French woman behind the cheese counter.

Ten years after this incident, I still smart when I recall it. I have had my share of insults over the years. When I returned a library book a few days late in Dar-es-salaam, Tanzania, a local hurled insults at me, adding that "all Indians were thieves." I was 12 years old but I realized then that the world could be an ugly place. At a Hong Kong hospital, a Chinese woman accused me of not losing my postpartum weight because I was "plain lazy". I bristled. At least she was honest. At the Ritz in Paris, the door boy wouldn't let us in after looking at our scraggly Mowgli faces. In New York city twenty odd years ago, our family was followed for several miles by a fair-skinned gentleman who waited outside a shop until we decided it was time to call the police. At San Jose State University two decades ago, a fellow student of mysterious eastern origin asked me if I were Hindu and told me that I must convert, "for only Jesus could save" me. I told her I had been saved many times over by my pantheon of Hindu gods and scooted out of there, calling out to elephant-headed Ganesha to save me from myopic minds. And who can forget the snide remark from a coworker many years ago about my arranged marriage: "Are you really in love with him? Or are you simply tolerating him?" At the time, this coworker didn't have a love life or a marriage, so I was still one up over her, I thought. Should I cut her down to size? Or should I let it pass? I let it pass, telling myself that it was pointless to needle a grouchy woman who was guaranteed to be laid off before ever getting laid.

But to be prejudged by a cheese vendor because my skin was the color of Sri Lankan maids who lived with vain wealthy French dowagers and their Scottie dogs and exercised the pale, lonely limbs of their employers in the morning sun at a French park? I came home and tossed my American sneakers. I made up my mind that day to never leave my doorstep in Paris without looking like a million dollars.

The City of Light began radiating warm rays of kindness on my tanned skin. The lady at the dry cleaning shop started chitchatting with me. The woman at the boutique 'Le CouCou chez Nous' would walk up to me at every visit asking whether she could help me choose something. The chain-smoking owner of Couleur Cafe sat down to chat whenever I went there for my favorite croissant and cup. Ah, Paris. The City of Light and The City of Heavy Prejudices.

I came back to America a year later and the first thing I shed were my pumps, my pants and my attitude. I put on the sweats. And the pounds.

Yesterday I stood at the counter at Nob Hill Supermarket, Large Grade AA Brown eggs in hand. "And, ma'am, did you have any trouble at all finding your things today?" the white man at the counter asked, a genuine smile playing on his face. "Not at all, sir, I know my way around here, thank you!" I replied, flashing back a smile.

CAMPBELL. 2009.

Age: approximately 47.

Weight: 120 pounds, give or take 8 more pounds.

Height: 5', 2.5".

Hardly cigarette slim. Indian women Always Get Fat.

Well spoken in English.

Sneakers. Sweatshirt. Sweatpants.

Skin color light copper. A tawny color, the color of an Indian Summer. Pleasant Woman.

15 February 2009

“Mom, at least I have my ovaries, you know?”It wasn’t a question as much as a
commentary on how much worse things could have gotten in a matter of a few
months.

Over two years ago, my 16-year-old lay on the examination table at the
radiologist’s office, her pelvic region exposed. Her right eyebrow was arched
into an inverted ‘U’. She could whip up a ‘U’ just like that when the situation
was ironic.

The technician had just finished explaining to us that while
my daughter had an innocuous cyst on the surface of the right ovary, everything
else – the uterus, the peritoneal cavity, the intestines floating above –
looked perfectly normal.

I heaved a sigh of relief, curious enough now to want to prod
the lady into telling us a little more about missing body parts. But I
desisted.My kid was more cynical
than Dr. Laura. Why scan the world for more anomalies?

“Now here’s the scope that we normally use when performing a
trans-vaginal ultrasound,” the lady continued, wielding a foot-long plastic
wand which looked like one of those Dyson vacuum heads for cleaning unreachable
corners. This one had a camera at the tip. She smiled broadly as she saw my
daughter’s eye begin to bulge. “And guess, what, we cover it with a condom.”

“Now that’s what you
guys push – down there?” she asked, her tone mocking and fearful at the same
time.For a second I wondered if
the voice was really directed at me, chastising me for my promiscuity (under
the umbrella of marriage, mind you) two decades ago, which (thank goodness)
produced her.

“Yes, young lady, but one look at you and I knew I wouldn’t
have to worry. We don’t do it if you’re not sexually active.” The technician
looked at me and smiled an all-knowing smile.There are times when parents mentally thank god for the
wisdom of those who walk into our lives just for a ten-minute period but leave
a lasting impression on us for the rest of our lives. What the lady said next
tied up the loose ends of a package of conflicting experiences, emotions and
anxieties and cast that bundle out into the open sea.

“You know, you won’t believe how many times I’ve examined
young girls like you and found that there was no vagina.”

“No way!” we cried, my daughter and I, in unison. How could
that be?

“Doctors have sent me girls who, on the surface, have all
the outward female attributes. Breasts. Curves. Everything. But when I try to
go in there, there’s no vagina. And sometimes even if there were a place for me
to take the scope, then I find no uterus or no ovaries. None. Nada. These are
beautiful girls and they will continue lives as women - but they’re considered
men by the medical community.”

The teen in the room looked at the two of us.In that moment, in that sterile 8’ by
10’ space, three women stood, every one of us solemnly contemplating the
gravity of what had been said, overjoyed by our own fecundity.

“Mom, let me get this straight,” she spat out, riddling me
with her familiar staccato style of speaking, the fingers of her right hand
bulleting her points out in mid air.“I’m making a fool of myself at high school this junior year. I’m
failing Calculus. I’ve sucked at every quiz and test in Biology. I’m getting a
B in, of all subjects, English, which I’ve zoned every year for the past 12
years. My hemoglobin count is worse than even my AP Bio grades. But now I am
supposed to be ecstatic that I leak every 19 days?”

“Yes,” I grinned, looking right back at her. “You got it.”

We walked out of the doctor’s office in silence, a daughter
and a mother, our minds marveling, no doubt, at how a woman’s rite of passage –
cumbersome as it is in this journey called life – is the fountainhead of minor
exigencies and, incidentally, monumental pleasures.

14 February 2009

By this, our 26th year of marriage, I’m expected to have pulled myself out of the quicksand of money woes, tried and tested pages from the Kama Sutra, swum through cesspools of dirty diapers and conquered mountains of unwashed laundry–alongside a husband spent, softened and limp from years of domestic toil and conjugal bliss.

I have. I have done it all. But I find myself waiting. For an unabashed, reckless love. An old-fashioned, mushy, wet, gallant, swashbuckling, feisty, and ‘red alert’ kind of love. Will my Cupid gallop in haste toward me if I write him poetry? “Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn,” said poet Thomas Gray. Should I strike a match so my Indian-American Cupid, my Manmatha, will burn?

I begin writing, like Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach . . .

But Cupid interrupts in poetic form on Google Talk:

Did you pay or not the AMEX bill

Don’t tell me you haven’t paid it still!

This isn’t in iambic pentameter, but I see a spark. Perhaps my Sir Galahad will rise from the dust if I gave him verse from Ogden Nash? On the contrary, I prefer to write a high-octane verse borrowed from 18th Century English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Nothing in the world is single;

All things by a law divine

In one another's being mingle:—

Why not I with thine?

But my Cupid’s terse reply makes it werse. His two years alone have colored his thoughts.

Now that I have been in the world single

I’ve had more time to make merry and mingle

I must say your touch doesn’t make me tingle

If dinner’s ready, won’t you give me a jingle?

This isn’t working. My Lord and Master used to be the master of ribald verse when he was courting me after our arranged marriage. I must venture into the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam to fire up his muse before he grows bald.

A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,

A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread - and Thou --Beside me singing in the Wilderness - O, Wilderness were Paradise enow!

But to that he did catch me on Yahoo! to say

I’d buy you the baguette, the book and the wine

In Paris, and with me you’ll dance and dine

But I’ve just fallen on my face on E-trade

And I’m not sure I’ll get our flight upgrade

So can we find love on Facebook, lover divine?

So shh…..everyone….drumroll please…

It’s Valentine’s Day and my
husband is on to a Critical Phasebook moment...he’s on to his 1050th
friend. He’s Friending. Necking will simply have to
wait until he gets his Pal-entine.

08 February 2009

Last week, my husband found out that he was elected into the
National Academy of Engineering. Long before him, over two decades ago, I was inducted into The National Academy ofengineeringSpouses.So I’ve
been feeling rather sorry for him. Just how many times can a man handle being
upstaged by his own wife?

In all these years, I never gave much thought to my
appointment. But I found out recently that we, the nominees, are held in very
high esteem by nominators and hangers-on.Here’s a look at how some of the spouses who have entered this hall of
fame have engineered their destiny with ample forethought and a smidgen of
deception.

Engineering
our way into bigger bank accounts

A friend and engineering
colleague who shall go unnamed found that in a joint account her contributions
were going largely unnoticed. So she opened another account, making sure that
the monthly mortgage dues and the credit card payments decimated her husband’s
side of the well. Of all the engineering marvels, including Da Vinci’s creations,
this goes down as a remarkable feat by a high-performance wife who is also a whiz in number theory.

Implementing the Dijkstra method

Anyone who has taken courses in computer science will tell
you about the Dijkstra algorithm: for a given point, the algorithm finds the
path with lowest cost (rather, the shortest path) between that point and every
other point. Engineers always tout efficiency and economy. I’m an expert at finding the simplest thing my good man can
do and the shortest way in which he can do it (because he always needs
directions from point A to point B). But pretty soon, however, I will slide in
one pit stop and another–and another. “Darling, while you’re there, can you do
this? And can you stop there?” I do also apply one thing I learned in my ten years in the corporate world:
“Need to know”. Don’t tell your man everything all at once.

After 25 years of being on the bleeding edge of laundry
management, I’ve learned that complaints about shrinking sweaters and tri-colored underwear are best handled in this way: the task is immediately delegated to the complainer. Look at all the tasks that I delegated in this manner over the years: doing the bills, emptying the dishwasher, managing the finances, taking out the garbage, sorting clothes into whites and colored and driving.

Genetically
engineered habits

A wife's return policy can have a man in a tizzy. My mother had a return policy of at least three returns over a
period of a year at the stores she frequented. By the time the third
return came along, dad had lost track of the original investment and any and all subsequent hikes. Today I find this return policy gene invaluable in
architecting spending plans in my marriage. Our Amex bill has so many credits
and so many debits that the engineer of the house has stopped doing the math. And
what he cannot differentiate is becoming integral to our marital bliss.

If there’s something you don’t like in the house that has
overstayed its welcome (and it belongs to your partner), you may dispose of it without incurring the wrath of
the said person.But you must first learn the art
of phasing things out. Have a closet phase first: hide giveaways
in a closet for a month. Then, in the next week, relegate it to the garage.
Then enter phase three: store object(s) in the trunk of a car or van.
Finally, you may gently, absently almost, tow it to the Goodwill truck. But be
forewarned, the object will be needed one day. Trust me, every object you
dispose of will be asked for one day. But when the time comes, adorn the mask
of disingenuousness: “Let’s see…where did it go? I saw it just the other day…

Proactive
Quality Assurance using vanilla cream candles

Good food alone doesn’t cut it, anymore. You’ve got to reinvent using proven psychological tricks. It’s about ambiance, smell, color. The
latest research in the journal Science
says colors affect your mood. Smells matter too. " We tend to be happier and perhaps even more optimistic in an environment with a pleasing odor," says Dr. Alan Hirsch, founder of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation, Ltd., in Chicago. I know a saint of a husband who turned
snarky one day. “I know you like antiques, honey. But when will you stop
serving me antique food?” My husband rarely says it even when I serve him leftovers because I consistently dress up my food,
my table and my kitchen to redress the titanic careening of my love boat. There's a reason that a vanilla cream scent wafts through our home day after day.

If there are any spouses out there who would like to share other tried and tested engineering tips, please write. I hope your words will be on the money and that you may save someone some alimony.

05 February 2009

Since 2000, I’ve been to Santa Clara’s
Dasprakash a few times a year with a family member or a friend. Every time I
visit, the service is impeccable. The hosts are by turn gracious and
loquacious, always asking if there’s something else they can bring to my table
to complete my meal. Going to Dasaprakash is like visiting the warm, elegant
home of a hospitable aunt, an aunt who strikes a fine balance between serving a
home-made meal and presenting it with flair and style, an aunt who, no matter
the day or time, whips up a simple, yet delectable meal in which every dish
looks distinct and tastes different.

Decades of working in the dining business
has rubbed off on Madhu and Geetha Das who hail from Mangalore, India. Madhu's
father opened the first Dasaprakash in Udipi in the state of Karnataka in the
1950s. Over the years, Dasaprakash's name would become synonymous with
delicious home-style South Indian Vegetarian food. Dasaprakash in Santa
Clara has turned it up a notch in the price department compared to many other
restaurants that offer similar fare. But when I eat here I know my dollars are
well spent and I can predict my food will be well digested. The décor is
classy and subtle; on display on the left wall are small black and white
photographs of scenes from Indian villages. On the right wall hang age-old
cooking utensils among a few vibrant saris from the South. It’s minimalist and
calming. And–most important–it has a clean restroom.

Dasaprakash promises me consistency every
time I go, a quality that’s almost impossible to find here among Indian fare in
the Bay Area. So what is our problem? Why can’t Indian restaurants keep up
the quality? Why don't they, once and for all, clean up their act–along
with their restrooms?

Most Indian restaurants around the United
States–with the exception of a Tawa Café in New Jersey that on a
cold day in January offered a warm dead rat dunked in Mutter Paneer to my sister-in-law’s
friend’s friend who lived to tell the tail–are mediocre. Tawa apparently got roasted
last month by the Department of Health but as someone says on the Internet,
what’s to prevent the owner from opening shop somewhere else using someone
else's name?

I think the real problem is that the Indian
clientele does not care enough about authenticity; non-Indians, who really don’t
know that the food doesn’t meet standards, shrug it off.I
implore patrons of Indian food who plan on dining Indian in taste-deprived
Silicon Valley to consistently demand the highest quality. Don your
cynic hat now!!!

And here's what to take to the different
Indian restaurants in the Valley if you should go:

To Komala Vilas, Sunnyvale: A magnifying glass
just in case it’s your lucky day and you should spot a slice of tomato in the
rasam. Also take your own buttermilk or yoghurt. (Here buttermilk is a delicate
balance of 90% water and 10% buttermilk blended just right)

To Dosa Place, Santa Clara: Great Gobi Manchurian
here but you will need to carry a few empty crates to mail gallons of the
“out-there” Sambar to Pluto.Let
it go where no man may find it.

To Udupi Palace, Sunnyvale: Please take a
Polygraph machine to this royal place. We want the Udipi Roti to speak up. Are you a roti or a
papad? Or neither? Tell us the truth or forever hold your piece.

To Kokila’s kitchen,
Cupertino: A
“Change we Need” leftover sign from Mr. O’s campaign. Kokila–who used to be a
nice 'behn'
(sister, in Gujarathi) and the doyenne of the best rotis, gulab jamuns, chevda,
dhoklas in San Jose–is fast becoming the bane of Indian food lovers. In
the rush to offer vegan fare, these guys have forgotten the key ingredient to
good eating. Taste.

To Saravana Bhavan, Sunnyvale: Don’t forget a
science poster board to act as a buffer between you and the guys next to you.
The tables here which are set about an inch apart for maximum accommodation
don’t make it a great choice for Valentine’s: you may end up making lewd
propositions to someone else’s date.If you let your date choose anything but dosa at this hole in the wall,
that may well be the last date with your date.

To Amber Restaurant, San Jose: Red Alert! Carrya heavy dose of skepticism to this one.
This upscale haunt in snooty Santana Row is the only Indian act in this tony
part of town.I went there
expecting a buffet in such a place to stun me.I was stunned by the mundane fare and the detached service.

To Chaat Paradise, Mountain View:Some of the nicest chaat and parathas in the Bay Area, no doubt.
But please go here with a U-Haul and cart away their trademark idols and
garlands. Won’t they de-clutter the place, lose the Bollywood show on TV and evolve
from a trucker’s stop to a smart bistro considering they’re quite consistent on quality and high on taste?

03 February 2009

A few weeks ago, I backed out of my driveway
and strayed outside my self-imposed mental and geographic boundaries. I decided
to become part of a literary group called Left Coast Writers in Marin.

I had eyed this group from afar for the last decade. Every time I wanted to sign myself up, I’d hear a new (emerging) voice in my head. Year after year, the voice of protest grew louder still. And soon new voices snuck in where mine
used to be.

"70 miles north? At these gas prices
will these guys validate your toll, at least?" [Friend and Optimist]

“You must be dreaming. Mondays? Your kids have a two-hour violin lesson.
Remember, I can’t reschedule that.” [Teacher with schedules cast
in mortar]

By fall 2008, my head felt like it was at a wholesale produce market in India.

“$100? For that? I can get you a
year’s worth of potatoes and rice with that! Look at this! Mosey on here. No,
don’t go there. No value for your money! Rip-offs these people! Come here
instead! But you’ve got to. I’m going to make one last offer and that’s that…”

I signed up to be part of Left Coast Writers in late November and made my way up north at 5.30PM on the first
Monday of December. A sharp drizzle made driving difficult and slow in places.
But as I headed beyond the Golden Gate past Sausalito, I realized I was going
for a purpose. This writing group might inspire me and take me where I wanted
to go. If others could untangle themselves from domestic coils to chase a
literary dream, why couldn't I?

That evening LCW hosted a talk by Jean Shinoda Bolen a psychiatrist, Jungian analyst and clinical
professor of psychiatry at the University of California in San Francisco.
Bolen's books shed light on the need for spirituality in our lives. In Close to
the Bone, Bolen writes "When the possibility or reality of a
major medical illness arises, when we or someone we love are to be hospitalized
for observation, diagnosis or treatment, it is metaphorically like being
abducted into the underworld-that subconscious or unconscious realm-where we
are assailed by fears and vulnerabilities that we usually keep buried there and
at a distance." I'm reading it right now. I wish I'd known about
Bolen's work sooner. I wish I'd sought to buy it when I faced such challenges in
my life a few years ago.

Yesterday, I crossed the
bridge again in anticipation of meeting this welcoming clique for the next
session. On this February evening, I caught a cheeky flash of peach, pink and
orange just as the sun turned in for the night. Niloufar Talebi, a young
Iranian American and an award-winning translator, recited poetry from Belonging,
an eclectic
anthology of recent poetry by Iranians living around the world. Talebi
read selections in Farsi and, in turn, in English.

As she exploded from one emotive piece into another, I remembered what writer Isabel Allende had said, very simply, in the
same venue when asked why she continued to write in Spanish even though she was
so fluent and expressive in English. "English? How can you make love
in English?"

By
performing also in Farsi – a language which packs in gun powder, red roses,
saffron, dynamite and wine – Talebi took philistines like me behind the veil and
into that human mind replete with landmines and infinite possibilities.